Comics or Bust, waiting for Poser

It is now August and I've still not produced anything this year. Bad bad bad ero! Don't worry though, I haven't been wasting time, in fact I've done a lot of extremely useful and valuable things, but nothing has been completed yet. I realized I've got too many balls in the air and decided to temporarily drop a few to get at least something done this year. One of them is Project E unfortunately, but not without reason. 

If any of you have Lali's Bits then you'll know that Project E will be crazy complex and very detailed, and to make such a figure I need a rock-solid platform that gives me total control over my figure. Poser is almost such a platform, with lots of extremely useful tools to get me 60% of the way. Unfortunately Poser also suffers from a lot of crippling bugs that have never been addressed, which make it near impossible to oversee and manage the complexity of Project E (or even to get it to work properly on your PC). And with all the attention it has been getting lately, I don't want to release a half-assed figure.

Waiting for Poser 11

The good news is that Poser has a new product manager (Nerd3D) that seems to have a better and more diligent grasp of what has to be done to get Poser fine-tuned. So far I can only rely on his words, those of some of the testers and other rumors, but most of them seem quite promising. In any case they seem more in contact with the reality of their user's experiences than before, and that should only prove beneficial, imo. Let's hope I'm right!

btw, concerning DS, no promises but I have a vendor closely affiliated with DAZ that has offered to help get Project E into DS once she's working. The tech theoretically works in DS but it just needs some small tweaks to read PE properly. But first I have to get the girl working properly in Poser, my platform of choice.

So I've decided to focus entirely on my comics until Poser 11 comes out. And even then, I've decided to delegate some development tasks to other people so that I can focus more on my comics, the entire reason why I got into 3DCG in the first place. Luckily I've now got some very competent people offering their help to me in running this project, and also they agree with me that it is best to wait for Poser 11. But not to worry, PE still gets developed as I make my comics, since that's what she was made for.

Finally some comics!!

Now for comics, Poser is brilliant, so no excuses there. I've added a progress bar frame up top, so that you can see what's happening. Most of the progress would indicate the posing / rendering phase, because that's really what its all about. But if the progress is at 10% it would mean that everything is set up, but now has to be acted out and rendered. In actual fact it should be 50% because preparing the scenes is half the work, but usually preparation work is also in conjunction with other comics, and future comics related to that comic. Like with the Disco Dragon, once part 1 is done, parts 2 and 3 should be smooth sailing since everything is set up.

Progress

And on that note, like I said I haven't been wasting time this year. The good news about my comics is that, despite having spent so much time on Project E, I've still managed to build up figures, props, clothing, materials, entire sets and locations for the stories I've been planning to do. All I really need to do is pose the characters and render. I've already started with the Disco Dragon part 1 a few weeks ago and its 74% done. I hope I can finish it by the end of this month, otherwise it will be beginning of September. 

Erogenesis' Madness streamlined

The Disco Dragon (DD) will by far be the most elaborate comic I've ever made, even crazier than the Gentleman's Club. The first part will be the introduction to the story, setting up the reason there will be so much sex in the second and third parts. I think by now I've firmly established that 'Lite' means: fun, light-hearted, no violence etc, as opposed to a short comic lol. I cannot do short comics! However I'm not going to make the same mistake as the Gentleman's Club to wait and release it in one go, but rather in three parts, both for entertainment reasons as for marketing and financial reasons. Most of all you won't have to wait so long for some prime Lali entertainment lol

For free???

Part 1 will be for free, and the other two will be for sale. I do this for two reasons: 1. so that you can see what the comic will be about. 2. shameless marketing. I've discovered that there are many people out there that hesitate to want to pay for 3DX comics, partly because of being disappointed. So like this people can see my quality and what they can expect the next time they pay their hard-earned $$$ for a comic of mine. Also, I've found out that a lot of folks out there don't exactly know that Lali comics are not your average 3D erotica. So hopefully this will also help folks see what Lali is all about and make them less hesitant to invest in my work. Of course, and I am not ashamed to admit that this will help my sales along a bit... which is necessary because I need to make a living hehe

And then...?

For the rest, as you know I have a load of other comics planned, but I hope to get Sen's first comic done this year!! I'm in the mood for something totally different!

Secret Projects

Yes I have one secret 'comic' coming up, and I'm also working on a simpler 3D model of something, something with the level of detail of Lali's Bits ;) I won't say more.

July updates - Poser figures & comics

Hey peeps!

Good news, I appear to have a nice work-around for the JCM problems I was having with Project E. Thank you to those that helped! This means I can now FINALLY start thinking about how to wrap this girl up.

Make no mistake there's still MUCH to do, decisions to make, and there's always a small risk of realizing it might be a lost cause... but at least I can finally resume serious development. I need to do mesh repairs, entirely new JCMs, new WM, improved UV maps. I have a few vendors advising me already about this and that. 














One of my key ambitions with Project E is compatibility, at least with V4. Firstly for my own sake, it will save me a load of work not having to convert all my V4 content, and second the same also applies for you guys. I can animate the joint centers and make her compatible with V4 clothing, and make her compatible with V4 textures, for me the compatibility thing is no problem because that's private, but once I put this girl in the store, things will be a little different... legally. So its a matter of finding a nice solution. Should the whole compatibility not work out, I doubt I'll bother releasing PE. I'm not going to make any illusions about support and I'm not going to let her go down in history as yet another dead figure... of course unless I can rack up some proper support for her. 

In the meanwhile I'm setting up a tester of the current version for review for a few vendors (of which I just improved the shoulder Weight Maps - top picture). Please don't ask for this copy because I only want very specific people looking at it. The real beta testing version will come out much later when most of the above mentioned improvements have been sorted out.

I wish to repeat, and I cannot stress this enough: Project E is a figure I have designed to use for my comics, and thus it is a moderate/hi resolution artistic figure with plenty detail, not a lo-poly game figure. I am not promising a V4 replacer, or a figure that is better than what DAZ makes. If it works for me, I presume it will work for some others too.

BTW the figures you see here are FBMs and character tests. This could be the face of Project E but that can change in time. The base body of Project E is very flat and featureless to minimize any disturbance in the effect of the weight mapping.

V7 mania

No doubt most of you artists will have noticed that CG giant DAZ has released yet another genesis figure (G3), along with all the usual merchandise getting re-sold, as well as a new Victoria model. Off course me being the nosy bugger that I am I go an buy it and check it out and open my big mouth on all the relevant forums (except DAZ's... ahem). But aside from it being DAZ exclusive (as in, not Poser), G3 is a good figure. If you work with DS, you're in for a treat, especially with Iray, their new renderer! (check my impatient attempt above lol) 

But if you use Poser, well...yeah, hmm, I don't wanna pick a fight or anything but I do wanna say that its not really cool to develop a figure partly financed by the thousands of dollars that loyal Poser customers have invested in DAZ, and then not let those same Poser customers enjoy it, half expecting them to dump their entire workflow to start using a new piece of software just for a figure... not sure what to think about that. 


There were some arguments for technology or something, but within 24 hours of G3's release, a bunch of Poser users over on Rosity managed to port G3 into Poser, looking fairly decent too. If they could do that, then I'm quite sure DAZ could've easily made a plan for their Poser fan base. Hmm... anyway, whatever. I tried to port G3 into oser like those guys did but without much success. To be honest I didn't try very hard because I already have my own figure. 


But still, in defiance I chucked V7 and PE into zbrush and basically traced her shape onto PE, making an FBM for her. 

Hua! Hua! Hua! Hua! All your FBMs are belong to us!!




Comics

No further news regarding comics, other than that the Disco Dragon is busy rendering on my second PC and another secret project rendering on a third PC. Whenever I'm not working on PE or some other project, I work on Sen's first comic. I cannot wait to bring that comic out! I think I'll be using the updated Project E for Sen. That will be siiiick! :D

Tales of the Rogue

Speaking of comics, as a young CG comic artist myself I feel I must support CG artists wherever I can. Upstarting CG artist and buddy of mine, DarkSeed, just wrapped up his first fantasy comic about his heroine Abbadonna entitled "Tales of the Rogue - Into the Cursed Woods". Darkseed spent a good long time working at it and is now finally also a veteran of the comic-making process. Darkseed is a very ambitious fellow and this can be seen in this elaborate tale. If you're a fan of strong leather-clad ladies in a world of demons, legends, swords, comedy and magic, I certainly recommend checking this out, especially now since it's on sale this weekend over at drivethrucomics!







Comic format

So my last post was about what comic format you guys would like me to use, and first of all THANK YOU for all the votes. Second of all, the result was very surprising. I was honestly thinking that the landscape cinema style would be more popular but it seems that the old-school comic still wins it! This is kindof a relief because the Disco Dragon is rendering at a massive cinematic format now and its taking FOREVER to cook renders! I might resort to a horizontal comic if it takes any longer. What is also clear is that tablets are not as popular as the good old laptops and PCs with you guys. I guess tablets are rather small eh? 

So what do you guys think of the results then? Let me know your opinions!


Below a copy of the poll (also if you wanna vote and haven't yet)

Future Lali Comics format

Hey guys, some of you might have already seen the little poll over to the side here --> (thank you for all the votes already cast!!) I should've done this a while ago. I actually have a survey coming up soon that I'm building up over on SurveyMonkey about Lali comics in general.

I've actually started rendering the disco dragon (and also ready to render Sen's comic) but I'm not that far that re-rendering in a different format is a problem. So if you have time please let me know your thoughts on what format you prefer. I need to decide this before I start.

(btw check I found my old storyboard for CODE 10 lol)






____________________________________________________________

So just a quick breakdown of the options in the poll:


Old school upright with frames (like CODE10)

So this is the classic comic book format that I've already been doing for my first four comics including the Gentleman's Club. the only reason I chose to do it this way was pure nostalgia, and I actually didn't really think about the readability. Someone told me to keep going in this format just in case I ever get printed. But for laptop's and PCs its actually a bit clumsy to read. 

In any case I really do like the framing of smaller pictures, it gives that old-school tintin or asterix feel to it. This is one of my favorite formats.

Same as above but then horizontal

So you could say old school comic books with small framed pictures and speech bubbles, but then lengthwise for laptop and PC screens. I don't have an example but I think Epoch did formats like this with his earlier work.

I actually planned to do this format for the Gentleman's Club but I hurried my way into production not realizing I had just started with the same old upright format! Oops. 

I think I'd be cool with this format, I might try this for the next Black Desk, but it would feel odd since its not like real comics. Not sure though.

Large picture series, less pages (classic 3DX) 

Here we're talking formats like what Blackadder does, and just about all other 3DX artists. The only reason I added this as an option is because, well, I am thoroughly lodged in the 3DX scene and this seems to be the standard. 

I do have a small project in the pipeline that will use this format, but that project is well suited for this format since it has simply no storyline.

But even so, I doubt I could ever work with a format like this. You've undoubtedly noticed that my emphasis is much more on story, dialog and funny situations, and thus a LOAD of renders. Rendering at full 3DX format would be suicide for me, and probably useless because the detail and resolution of a render is not important when Lali and xtina are talking about what happened last night... :P lol

One thing I'd like to add here was that after the release of the Gentleman's Club, I read somewhere that someone wanted to zoom in to one of the images because they wanted to see the detail of some of the sexy stuff. But the resolution was not suitable for that. I guess this format would solve this but in all honesty, in my 3 years as a 3DX artist I have only ever received like 1 or perhaps 2 complaints that my format was too small. Even requests to make a larger version of a certain render are rare. My emphasis is definitely not wallpaper, but context. So I think I made that compromise in my comic Impulse, where I zoomed into the action for the reader.

Small pictures, more pages 

Take this one seriously because I've been entertaining you with nothing else but this format, and seemingly to effect. First of all all my free series are this format, small but entertaining pictures, sure there's not much resolution, but people seem thoroughly entertained regardless. Second of all, my first three comics were more-or-less this format too, except placed in frames on a larger page (with a few larger full-page renders every so-many pages). The advantage of this format is the speed of production I can operate at, and therefore much more freedom in the story dynamic.

By the way, when I mean story I don't just mean dialog and non-erotic stuff. Look at the Gentleman's Club, you can see character-building and fun interaction during the sex-scenes. This is something I really want to perfect with my comics, that the sex scene is not separate from the story, but that is has everything to do with it!  But that's not got to do with format, but yeah, the smaller, the faster I am, the more versatile.

Cinematic small, flipbook style (like Impulse) 

This format seemed to me to be a nice compromise between the large but resource intensive 3DX format and my small render avalanche format. The cinematic wide-angle strip worked nicely for me because first of all it gives you the feeling of the cinema, which is associated with entertainment, the wide format also gives a feeling of big and spacious, but more conveniently it removes a whole lot of pixels above and below the scene :D !! So basically I have the wideness of a 3DX format, but the height of my usual renders. I gain speed, but also presentation with this format.

This format did inspire me to experiment with flipbook-style animation, which is basically poor-mans animation. My comic Impulse was the first one I tried this with and people seemed to be convinced by it, even though it was rather vanilla. 

I think I have decided to do Sen's new comic in this format regardless, because I really want to get that Sand n Sandals '300' feel to the comic, with the flipbook animation style following the fighting (and the sex).

Optimized for tablets / Optimized for Laptop / PC 

These options, are not necessarily formats, but they can have an effect on preferred formats. I'm just curious what you prefer to use regarding my comics, or perhaps digital comics in general. 

Think about this one because with tablets on the rise, the old upright comic book format might be a thing to re-consider. It depends on what you're comfortable with. 

____________________________________________________________

So yeah let me know what you'd like to see!


(I hope the poll widgets shows below...)

What comic format do you prefer for Lali stories? You can select more than one answer.

 

Other News?

Not much else to annouce other than that I spent the last two weeks eyebrow deep in perfecting Project E's naughty morphs. I can be so crazy perfectionist about it that I work myself into oblivion over it. Just a few days ago I hit my head on a beer bottle when I fell asleep at my desk while working on these morphs :P

And I also have a girlfriend haha, so its not like I'm missing sex!

Anyway, TMI!

cheers!

PS: One thing I forgot to mention and deliberately did not add, is the possibility of movies, because I know that option would have been very popular! Some of you might have seen the 'Lali Vines' on Renderotica, they were quite popular. But the simple fact is that movies are VERY resource, time (and beer) intensive, and that I don't have time for right now. Never-the-less I'm keeping my options open and even have plans with our good man Epoch  to give it a swing with the DCV once the comic nears completion. I will definitely give it a try and who knows it might work.

May Update

Hey peeps,

I've done a bit of cleaning up on this blog, kind of in preparation for making a website, but also because there's going to be a load of stuff happening in the next coming months. Comics obviously, but also probably some 3D goodies in the store of which I cannot yet say that much. Speaking of which, I just had a very welcome breakthrough with Project E, if you wanna know more then peruse over to the Project E page, I don't wanna sound the bells just yet, but things are looking good.

So as for this blog:

• I've updated the Girls' page with some more info
• Likewise Lali's page
• the Comics page is more up to date with actual projects
• I've added a link to 'Tips' about something useful for DSON-haters
• (BTW, FYI: I updated the 'About page' several months ago if you didn't know. It has some useful info about me and the world of CGe in general)

Most importantly there's a new page called 'Free Stuff'. For some of you loyal fans this is old news but there's basically a whole lump of links to every significant page / website related to my work or any of Lali's crazy spontaneous adventures on Arti of Darkness and elsewhere. This is not only fun, but perhaps also useful if you first wanna check out the quality of my work & storytelling before buying my comics!

Ok that's it for now, I'll keep you posted as the exciting new developments unfold.

Cheers!

e

3 years of LALIIIIIII

Hey guys, like said elsewhere: 3 years ago I released my first Lali comic (and officially entered the world of 3D Erotica (or CGe or 3DX)). Whooo!

This year I'm keeping Lali's BDay modest because I feel I need to first produce at least 3 comics this year (lord help me) before feeling jubilant. None-the-less, Lali got a cake from her co-stars on the set of the Disco Dragon, where the ladies (and I) are hard at work!! 

Thank you for all your support, comments, suggestions, love and patience throughout the years! Onwards to another year of Lali, this time hopefully filled with much more Lali antics!

Cheers!

edit: Lali says thanks for the cake and birthday wishes!!!

Good news, Bad news, and Good news

Sorry for waiting so long with a new post. I'm sure you guys have been following me elsewhere. Good news is I'm blasting ahead with three comics at once, I am entirely back on track after a lousy beginning of the year with all kinds of infrastructural problems and other domestic bullshit. 

Bad News

Ok so, let me quickly get the bad news out the way. So last time I was babbling on about Poser Game Dev's Kinect Mocap feature and how I was hoping that it would help me speed my workflow up. Well fuck that, its useless. I had hoped that it was at least a little useful, for like, getting basic poses recorded, or perhaps some decent movement for short little movies. But it was not meant to be. I wasn't expecting like super professional mocap or anything, but this feature is honestly pretty fucking useless. Even with trying to unfuck the result using an extra layer of animation, you might as well do the poses yourself. For motion capture itself it might be useful, but you'll still have to guide the whole result into not looking like a retarded zombie. I wrote a whole epistle on Renderotica about it but one of the things I noticed about the feature is that even in Poser's OWN tutorials you can see that the mocap isn't even remotely accurately calibrated for their OWN figures (shoulders are up to the ears by default), which leaves me to ask: what the fuck were those guys thinking? So yeah, I bought a $200 kinect for nothing, for now then. Maybe it will improve with the next SR, who knows?? If any of those guys is reading this, I HIGHLY recommend a calibrating tool for the mocap skeleton.

Ok so that was the bad news. There is some neutral news about the Oculus Rift that I tried. Its fun, its fascinating, but I can't use it professionally. The DK2 is indeed a development kit, still very pixelly, and it gets uncomfortable in a hurry. Also, I just can't see my keyboard. I do sometimes use it in an emergency when I need to hide what I'm doing (because of certain unauthorized people wondering around).

Good news

Now the good news! So yeah I'm full on busy with comics. The good thing about Poser Game Dev is the figure combining and poly reduction features. I will combine all of the Project E characters with their clothes for the non-sexual scenes, and remove a tonne of hidden polys, making the figure very mobile in a crowded disco full of V4 and M4 that have been reduced in polys. I also have some lores figures from renderosity going in the scene. I forgot to do a street scene so I'm now also working in that. there is a scene with all the girls packed into a Mini Cooper, which will be fun!

And guys you HAVE to go to Deviant Art because there's so much new stuff!!!

Sci Fi

Next to that I went doodling around with Project E and spent an afternoon working on a future concept called Siren 7 which is a Sci Fi story set in the future. The lead  character is called Rose. Because the response was so enthusuastic on Deviant Art, I decided to spend another day working on a futuristic exploration suit for the main character. I'll probably be releasing that in a store near you soon.

Better News

Now back to animations. Just today while I was waiting on a render I came across a compilation of 'vines' on youtube. Vines are like short message service thingys but then with video. they last something like 6 seconds and are a rage! Together with that, some of you might know (or engage in) collecting animated erotica GIFs on site like Tumblr, and they are also short like vines are. So I thought I might try make some Lali vines, partly as an experiment to see if I can start thinking about adding looping animations in my comics. Well... here are two animations already (made in the last 6 hours! And I have another along the way.

These animations were made by hand, using Poser's interpolation off course. Note: NOT with the bloody mocap feature. Just imagine if that improved, or if I won the lottery and could get me some proper mocap stuff. Man I'll be making movies instead of comics! 

So yeah onwards I go. I hope next time I sit here babbling at you guys I have a comic in the store... well almost then. And a new website!

Proper 3D, Poser MoCap and trouble with Genesis

Hey people! Exciting times! I've finally saved up enough to buy some very interesting gadgets that should help things speed up a bit, and also allow us to see Lali in true 3D!!! 


So... these comics?

What is taking so long? Every time I made a comic in the past, I learned something about production and saw where my workflow was slowing me down. As a result the transition to a new comic took long for me to re-adjust. I need to set my environment up so that I can keep producing. A while back I bought two new machines to exclusively take up the heavy task of rendering all the images of my upcoming comics, and so that I can continue on other computers while they were busy. But before I could even think of rendering my new batch of comics, I needed a better figure to work with. Although Victoria 4 served me well and gave me a lot of pleasure, it was time to move on to a better, more detailed figure, tailored to my requirements. I spent the last part of 2014 modelling and rigging Project E, and up until today she still undergoes constant refinements on a weekly basis. I can now safely say that Project E is ready for my comic. (But not yet for the market for this, like promised, I will try to make a simplified version for the store, right after I do some improvements to the mesh... and figure out a way for you to transfer textures!!)

But by far one of the biggest most time-consuming parts of making a CGI comic, outside of making a base figure and rendering hundreds of images, is the posing and animating of the characters in the scenes. When you're talking about a typical Erogenesis comic, you're looking at a different complex pose per image per character (and I always have several in one scene!), and in my upcoming comics we're easily looking at well over 300 images per comic (and 500+ for the next black desk!). That's thousands of unique poses! (I don't use stock poses, they suck) Although in the past I enjoyed working on the figures in such detail, it slows production down immensely!

Enter the Kinect! Poser's latest software solution is called 'Game Dev', which is essentially a pimped-up version of Poser Pro 2014, and it has a feature that allows you to apply motion capture to your figures. Now I've heard that Poser's MoCap feature isn't the best and most accurate in the world, but I am pretty sure it will at least do 50% of the work for me from what I've seen online. So that's one thing I am excited about!


True 3D!

I'm quite sure that most of you have heard about some of the developments taking place in the realm of Virtual reality these days? In the US they've been developing a cheaper way of experiencing Virtual 3D Reality for the consumer market, called the Oculus Rift, and although the device is not yet market-ready, the developer kits have sold like crazy and are sending shockwaves throughout the online community. Youtube is filled with crazy tech-fanatics showing us the possibilities of this Oculus Rift and its got me very interested in joining the hype. One of the first things I'll be trying out is making true 3D images of Lali, and if time allows, I'd love to make an entire comic in 3D!! BTW there are other devices getting developed like the Samsung GEAR and I believe Microsoft also has plans for Augmented Reality.

Can you imagine Lali in 3D?? or Sen for that matter!!!! :D

Genesis 2 attempts

FYI, ever since the release of Lali's Bits for V4, I've been asked numerous times if I'm going make a version for the new Genesis characters by DAZ. Although I was reluctant to do this at first (mainly because of the amount of work involved) I've been thinking about it more these days. Now don't get your hopes up, trust me when I say this: I have tried. 

Although DAZ Studio is not my preferred choice of Software, and I do have strong opinions about its design and usability, I am not by default anti-DS. Its still very good figure development software and on top of that it is free! I do keep track of their new releases and I do install it from time-to-time to see what the new features are. I have strongly considered developing Project E in DS like Hivewire did with Dawn, but its DS's learning curve that daunts me, especially considering all the other work I need to do. But who knows, maybe one day I might take up the challenge. In any case, I would be stupid not to keep track of DS's developments considering what I do. 

I bought Victoria 6 and Victoria 6 High Definition a while back with the intention of perhaps trying to convert the bits to them. After playing around with them several times, one thing is for sure: whatever development I would wanna do on V6, is not happening in Poser! If I would develop them in Poser, the developments wouldn't successfully translate back to DS at all. And just for the record, the DSON bridge is not an option. Development with DSON lodged inbetween is impossible. What I did was export V6 as a CR2, that seems to let V6 work in Poser without the DSON bridge. Also, V6HD is actually not HD at all, since the base mesh is no different from the regular Genesis 2 models. The HD part is apparently just a DS feature. 

So yeah not developing in Poser makes any hope for the bits for Genesis a bit slimmer. And no I cannot just migrate to DS; DS is good for figure development but Poser is way better for comic-making. Like I've said many times, Lali's Bits is a very complex system that can only be developed as I use it. Its like with Project E or what the guys of the Oculus Rift do, we develop these things in an applied environment, fine-tuning them according to what is required of them. Project E is another such an intimately complex system that responds narrowly to the movement of the limbs. You cannot just develop that in a in a separate environment than you actually use it. Within Poser, I am constantly refining her when suddenly I see her doing a pose that causes a problem around some bodypart. I make a morph to correct it, or change the Weight-Mapping or the ERC programming. You don't wanna know how complex Project E is under the hood. I cannot do this for Genesis unless I start using Genesis as my base model, and therefore also DS... and that ain't happening considering how limited Genesis is in so many areas, and how not suitable DS is for rapid internal image production (as you know I only use Poser's inbuilt Renderer to speed up production). 

One thing I will try is the GenX plugin whenever I have time. I still considering trying to make something for Genesis since I could use the money right about now. But I think I'd better take my chances with Project E rather than wasting my time with Genesis. We'll see though, we'll see. the point of this story is just to let you know that I have tried!


New Website

Jim, I still need to email you haha! Busy busy!